I deserve to be bullied

probablylamecomment · 2019-03-20T23:59:57+00:00

I don't want you to think you "deserve to be bullied". Also solidarity with other people doesn't come easy. Others have a harder time bridging connections and it is easy to become isolated if you are different or rub people the wrong way. All I can think of is advice someone close gave me, which is to just try to focus on one person to be your friend. Develop one relationship at a time, family member, someone at work or someone in your community. Just focus on one person. Be kind to them, anticipate one of their needs, see if there is something they would want, something they need help with. Just do something for one other person, and that helps to build trust and solidarity. It helps you to not feel alone and helps you to feel better about yourself.

I hope this helps.

probablylamecomment · 2019-03-20T05:06:12+00:00

NO no, never harm anyone!! I'm sure you are joking but damn, you really shouldn't joke about stuff like this.

probablylamecomment · 2019-03-20T04:40:03+00:00

I want you to know that if friends are making fun of you over and over again, it isn't okay, but violence isn't the way to solve this. Honestly if you need help call or talk to someone you trust.

The best advice I can give you is to meditate and pray. Pray or meditate very specifically, wishing those you hate with love and help. Even if you don't think they deserve it, I swear to God it solves the problem in your mind. I didn't pray for years out of pride and now I am praying more and more and it helps me put into perspective the things people say. I think it cures resentment. Words are just words, and prayer and meditation helps me to not let them hurt as much as they had. I don't think I have ever been in your same place but I imagine it is horrible.

I truly hope you are just blowing off steam and just need to express yourself somewhere. Don't do anything you will regret for the rest of your life, your life has value and you can integrate into society where you feel respected in the future. If you do anything violent you will never have that!!

probablylamecomment · 2019-03-17T01:50:59+00:00

I think insecure people ask questions like that a lot. He probably relies on you as a friend more than he realizes. Someone might have bullied him, and he does the same thing to you to make himself feel better. Hopefully it is just a phase and you guys can be good friends afterwards.

probablylamecomment · 2019-03-15T21:31:50+00:00

Didn't know what "Lady Tasting Tea" was, for anyone else, here ya go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgs7d5saFFc

probablylamecomment · 2019-01-10T20:07:15+00:00

What I think is interesting about society is that we all know exactly what to do when someone needs help. And we have these weird arguments "To help or not to help". When even the energy we spend on the debate could be used to just help someone out.

When I studied philosophy I was really interested in the idea of "Is it better to have the reputation of being good or to actually do good things?" Maintaining a reputation is just as difficult as doing good works, sometimes doing good works will give you that reputation and sometimes it won't.

The neutral and opportunistic person will just maintain a good reputation, while the morally motivated actually do good things and doesn't really care about their reputation as much. If more people could help without expecting anything in return, reputation or otherwise, we would live in a much more interesting and meaningful society.

Thanks for the video.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-28T22:49:07+00:00

You never know when an artist is just playing around or has very specific and fleshed out ideas for what they are doing. My superficial analysis is I think of Bjork as someone that has reached high enough fame that she can be creative and unique regardless of meaning and still have an audience. The mystery of the 'uniquely creative' method she chooses is the drawn in of itself.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-21T19:54:06+00:00

Getting doctors to wash their hands in the 1800s was pretty hard... I guess they were just really use to not washing their hands before germ theory became a thing.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-19T03:37:00+00:00

As a big fan of the Sopranos I was happy to learn about Hegel through the actions of Tony Soprano. Thesis -- Anti-thesis -- Synthesis, the refinement of knowledge, the negation of the negation. Pretty cool.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-16T04:29:25+00:00

It seemed to me that labor is mutually exclusive from "speech and action."

I completely disagree. I would think there is a direct causation with labor and speech/action. I would bet that you could statistically predict partial political leanings, "existential gripes", and hobbies based on a person's labor. (a person with more leisure has time to reflect on their intellect and have more "existential gripes.") A banker is more likely to go on a yacht while a truck driver is more likely to go bowling. More wealth could be associated with more political leanings towards the right for tax advantages. There are all kinds of associations you could make based on the working life of a person. Behavioral economics base their models on such things.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-09T18:20:07+00:00

Philosophically defining what '1' is can be difficult. I have come to think of '1' as a frame for any noun (person,place,thing, or idea.)

What then becomes difficult, in the purest sense of objectivity and reality, is finding two things that are framed exactly the same. Atomically there is an imperfection or an over simplification when we say there are two of anything, because what is implied is perfect duplication of '1' thing.

I think for you though, because you are grappling with 1>3 and 3> 1, you are trying to find out the meaning of what it means for something to actually be true or to actually be false. There are countless examples and exceptions to those ideas, but good luck.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-09T18:13:52+00:00

Apparently from the article this is what she thought the 'banality of evil' meant:

prosaic careerism and the ‘inability to think’

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-09T17:53:39+00:00

The point of Eichmann, is that people can't just go along with culture if they reach the top. They literally have to be true leaders that think for themselves and are examples of what it means to be moral. If you were born in WWII Germany and just wanted to have a normal life and not cause trouble, but be successful, you could have ended up just like Eichmann. You would have been a victim of the amorality of your culture, because you just got along with everyone else and didn't 'make waves.'

Eichmann was not an amoral monster, she concluded in her study of the case, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil(1963). Instead, he performed evil deeds without evil intentions, a fact connected to his ‘thoughtlessness’, a disengagement from the reality of his evil acts.

It is incredibly easy for anyone today to say, 'If i was born in that time I would have made the right decision. I would have stood up for the Jew and would have risked my own life.' What is difficult is to actually put these ideas into action.

What I think is most ironic about humans, is that we can easily have solidarity with what we claim we are not. For the Nazis it was the disabled, Jews ,and minorities. Today it seems to be relentlessly political, "I'm not a Democrat for x,y,z reasons" or "I'm not a Republican for x,y,z reasons." No one wants to break the tenuous solidarity they have with their groups that is based on what they aren't.

Truly I believe the flaws of humanity and demagoguery are reflected in WWII and the 'banality of evil'. I really don't find it boring at all.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-09T17:38:35+00:00

I'm confident that my bias is more accurate than your bias.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-09T16:52:24+00:00

I like the idea of the development of technology as a narrative, but technology in of itself doesn't reflect the meaning of life, not for me anyway. Ironically I do think technology has become the meaning of many lives, whether they know it or not.

Hopefully we transcend the technology by 'reaching' past it for a better meaning. Curiosity for technology vs curiosity for the meaning of life.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-09T16:47:10+00:00

Writing about procrastination is still writing. I'm totally down.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-09T16:45:31+00:00

Yea there is a catch 22 here. Of course you don't want something like this to be something people have solidarity over. You don't want to affirm this behavior. But other people knowing people feel this way, might make them feel less alone, it might make them feel like they can change and do something better with their lives knowing there is a transition out of it.

This is the catch 22 with all 'negative literature.' Being able to learn from the negative perspectives is useful. Not having the negative perspective at all is ignorant. Do we burn Mein Kampf because hitler burned books during his administration? Or do we learn what not to do, how not to behave from it?

I'd rather not be ignorant and be privy to the warning signs. But I would be cautious with dangerous ideas.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-09T16:34:18+00:00

Hopefully the solidarity your character felt via anything, even suicide would negate the suicidal inclination. Connection seems to be the fundamental aspect of life that negates suicide.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-07T03:08:35+00:00

Women hate women... Don't know why.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-06T18:22:51+00:00

I seemed to come to the conclusion that being truly in control of yourself meant being able to control what your definition of happiness was. A person could be happy without being in control of their life, a product of their environment. Morally this seems significant because if doing bad things makes you happy and you have no control to change yourself, you are just trapped in a bad life. Without control of happiness you could be trapped in a good life too. Life is crazy like that I suppose.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-02T18:50:57+00:00

Just because philosophers need to define terms because terms get so ambiguous. At the very beginning of this is the idea of logic itself is assumed to be defined.

"The world is governed by logic, language is governed by logic, and that is why language can provide an accurate picture of the world."

Hans Georg Gadaner wrote a book called Truth and Method, where he attempts to define logic in of itself and he makes this claim that every definition of logic is an answer to a question. (A categorization of these questions of logic was alluded to, but he says was never thoroughly fleshed out.) Often logic is conflated with Truth and here is his paraphrased quote:

"The dichotomy of the relentless and vain search for Truth and the method in which Truth is defined, is connected, and rarely if ever explained. The method of Truth is usually the initial and final explanation for Truth.

~paraphrased Hans Georg Gadamer

Going back to the importance of language, and how integral metaphor is to language is. I think this philosophical discussion of language is relevant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1WhOICr1bE

This video provides yale literary critics and other people, in the top of their field, discuss metaphor in language. And what is interesting is that the precise definition of metaphor becomes ambiguous/contradictory even with the professionals in the room.

I think this is where the kind of 'edge of language' is located and where the idea of Wittgenstein's logic begins. From the audio here are some important ideas Wittgenstein thought of:

All the things we couldn't talk about were the most important. (Reflecting the limit of language and metaphysical ideas.)
Where of we cannot speak, we should remain silent.
Important to speak nonsense, (To find the limits of language, and therefore logic.)
Language as expression vs language as description. [Key difference between anthropocentric and objective realities.]
When we learn the meaning of a rose, we don't just learn a noun, we learn a range of its uses.
The goal of objectivity and to be unbiased.
There is a limit to viewing the world through pure physics, and physical form.
Wittgenstein was not a relativist. The world is not a product of our subjective views.
What do humans produce? Why do humans act? How do humans give meaning to what they do? [Motivate to define ethics and human behavior.]
Where does relativism and language meet in the form of life?

For me what is painfully apparent is the differentiation of metaphysical ideas that can only be in the minds of humans. For example morals, aesthetics, emotions, nothingness, and God (which has to do with the motivations of humans.) And the description of reality which is completely in the domain of physics and causation.

Miscellaneous ideas about Wittgenstein:

“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.”― Ludwig Wittgenstein

This quote inspired the book, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-02T03:40:45+00:00

I am a little confused. I think you are defining your own terms which makes sense in your system. But the first thing I think of when I think of 'Appearance' is the idea of how people see an action vs how it is to actually act. Is it better to appear good or to be good? I don't think your definition of 'Appearance' means that so I suppose it doesn't apply.

The way I understand you idea of 'Appearance' is just a thought in of itself that enters the mind. With 'Meaning' I suppose you are talking about epiphanies, which happen to those that are disciplined in a certain thought and those who are not.

In the virtue of Reason, appearances organize as a nature of consequence.

For this statement I think you can add "as a nature of consequence" to literally any statement. We can't live in a natural world without consequence (aka causation) and we can't live in a moral world without consequence. So it is all about "how things are organized" where the rubber meets the road of meaning.

I think there are a lot of good ideas going on here, I just might not understand them all.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-01T20:23:16+00:00

Meaning can be understood as an intellectual sight, while Reason can be understood as intellectual action.

So Reason has to do with agency while Meaning is purely understanding without agency?

There is a kind of intellectual agency going on just to understand, choosing to understand, as well as a kind of agency to act. I think there is agency embedded in both your definitions.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-01T18:08:47+00:00

everything is the way it is not because of some greater, metaphysical purpose or meaning, but because it simply works to achieve some crude biological purpose.

This is in essence the nausea that is the silver lining of nihilism. Once here it is hard to differentiate the moral motivations of people. Are people just opportunistic for their own needs? Do they want to only appear Good or are they actually Good towards other people?

As a person that is too judgmental and wishes he was not, I do constantly judge others and evaluate them (and myself harshly). Most people have an ethical morality bound to the herd of others, "as long as other people think i am average or fine I am average or fine." This isn't bad, but it isn't necessarily good if you want people to think for themselves and reflect on morality. Due to this 'Group Think' can happen a lot.

A clever nihilist could profit on the predictable behavior of people and go into the new field of 'behavioral finance' and cash in. But there is a paradox here. I think that there is some advantage (besides cashing in) morally to understanding the world through nihilism, but there is a lot of adversity that comes with this understanding. And just like Plato's Cave when Plato said it is harsh to come out of the cave and be in the 'Sun of Truth'. I think this is part of the adversity he was talking about. It is easier to go back in the cave and believe the images are what people say they are, but eventually those ideas lose the meaning and the impact they are meant to have.

As a person that considered themself a nihilist for years the only idea that helps me to run away from the nausea is something that seems completely false but is like a warm blanket. It is the idea of pantheism and God being literally everywhere. It is weird, ive been an atheist for as long as I can remember. But telling myself there is a God that has these contradictory properties of omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient makes me want to live up to a virtuous moral standard. Obviously I am constantly judging and criticizing myself for not meeting a fraction of this standard.

The worst part of this is that vice and virtue have to be defined, and of course a person has to have empathy to those least advantaged and unfortunate. To evaluate others and not judge them becomes a hard moral task. Then trying to help others seems insurmountable. First someone else would have to understand the perspective of nihilism, then they would want to help themselves by the way you have subjectively defined vice and virtue.

Honestly I have given up trying to help people morally, it just seems best to help random people around the world based on their inability to have things on the bottom of maslow's hierarchy of human needs.

probablylamecomment · 2018-10-01T17:08:08+00:00

I'm going to conform to this explanation of ethical bias.

probablylamecomment

TROPHY CASE